Squireses' trial hits early bumps over evidence/Eureka chief building official takes the stand

The city of Eureka and the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office are back in court this week, asking for a permanent injunction on 26 properties owned by local landlords Floyd and Betty Squires.

The court adjourned early Wednesday morning and again on Thursday after the prosecution and defense failed to reach an agreement on whether an exhibit should be admissible as evidence.

The trial is the most recent action following a lawsuit filed by the city of Eureka and the District Attorney's Office against the Squireses in January 2011, alleging “ongoing and pervasive” code violations at their properties in Eureka, and unfair business practices. The Squireses deny the allegations.

On Oct. 24, 2011, Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale Reinholtsen signed off on an order granted in September 2011 to place six of the 26 properties owned by the Squireses into interim receivership.

Under interim receivership, an independent party would have taken control of the residences and brought them up to code. Reinholtsen's order was placed on hold Oct. 25, 2011, after the Squireses' attorney Bradford Floyd filed an appeal. That appeal is currently on hold pending the outcome of the current trial, which began Tuesday.

The most recent delay in the long-running case developed Wednesday, when Eureka Chief Building Official Brian Gerving was called to the stand by the city's attorney Dean Pucci. Gerving is the first in a series of officials expected to testify about what is described by the city as the Squireses' long history of promising to make repairs, sometimes even taking out permits, but not following through.

According to the city, the Squireses' properties have been the subject of 77 code enforcement cases -- related to substandard or unsafe conditions -- since 2003. The city also claims the Eureka Police Department has responded to almost 4,000 calls for service at the couple's properties over the past decade.

Gerving previously testified during a hearing on a preliminary injunction in March 2011 -- the same hearing that led to Reinholtsen signing the September 2011 order that placed six of the Squireses' properties into interim receivership.

Before Gerving's testimony could get underway, Floyd raised concerns about evidence the prosecution intended to use as a supplement to Gerving's testimony. At issue was Exhibit 24, a multi-page document created by the city of Eureka summarizing the alleged violations at each of the Squireses' properties.

According to Pucci, Gerving spent months during the preliminary injunction hearing providing testimony on page after page of notice violations and thousands of photos documenting the Squireses' properties.

”We were hoping that instead of taking four months, and having Gerving go over each and every detail like we did last time, that we could instead get through this in two to three weeks with this exhibit,” he said.

In raising his objection, Floyd said that he did not object to the exhibit as a whole -- and that he in fact agreed to “85 percent of it” -- but that he did take issue with specific parts of the summary, including the addition of code sections and descriptions he described as “argumentative.”

”We are both asking what can be done for this exhibit to be, one, acceptable between the prosecution and the defense, and two, most helpful for the court,” he said. “This document will save days of time, if we can reach an agreement.”

By Thursday afternoon, Pucci said he believed the city had reached a compromise with the defense that would see sections of the exhibit removed, but the majority left intact. Pucci said a stipulated version of the exhibit will be presented when the parties meet back in court at 8:45 a.m. today.

”We anticipated that the defense might raise some objections,” Pucci said. “From a legal standpoint, my belief is that this exhibit is admissible as evidence. But for the sake of moving forward, we have attempted to reach an agreement.”

Gerving said he is looking forward to the case getting underway, and that he hopes for a quick resolution.

”It has been a long-running case, much longer than we thought it would be at the outset,” he said. “But I am confident that the violations that the city documented, for the most part, are still there and that those issues still need to be rectified.”